Dragon Quest Heroes: The World Tree's Woe and the Blight Below

Published Wednesday 17 Feb 2016 9:19pmPlayStation 4

'Dragon Quest Heroes: The World Tree’s Woes and the Blight Below' is the latest spin off in the popular Dragon Quest JRPG series. The plot to this game is fairly simple - one day the cute and cuddly monsters of the world succumb to the evil spell of some dark wizard and start running amok, so it falls to you to restore order (which may including slaying a tonne of monsters who were your best friends just a moment ago).

The gameplay is equally simplistic, Heroes is a straightforward hack n slash game, where wave after wave of enemies march towards you (and their death) followed by some boss. And on the face of it there are a lot of downsides to this game:

1) The gameplay is both unremarkable and extremely simple. Combos can be done via a combination of two buttons and timing is really not challenging. On top of that, with the exception of the bosses, the monsters do not put up any sort of fight and simply march towards their doom.

2) It’s a good thing the enemies AI is so poor because your party is generally not of any help either. While you control a party of four you have no ability to set commands/orders for you team members. The moment you switch out the computer will send them off to do whatever it feels like. I’ve had time where my characters have simply stood around while the battle rages on around them.

3) The game also feels unfinished. The levels are extremely small and only some of the cut scenes are voiced (which seems to be at random). The menu system is also the most painfully slow and annoying process I have ever experienced and is incredibly poorly laid out. It feels like the developers were rushed for time so scrapped a bunch of features/functionality to make their deadlines.

Having said all of that, there is still something strangely addictive and satisfying about this game. Despite all its flaws I found it pretty enjoyable to send hordes of smiling, cutesy monsters to their deaths. For anyone new to the Dragon Quest series, I wouldn’t pick this as a starting point. But for existing fans looking for something to fill void until the release of Dragon Quest XI, this is a good way to kill some time.

"A shallow spin off which is still strangely enjoyable that provides a decent distraction until the n"